Fraser Island
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Discovery

Captain James Cook is usually credited with the European discovery of Fraser Island. This is somewhat unfair for a number of reasons. Although Captain Cook navigated the east coast of Australia in 1770, naming Hervey Bay (near Fraser Island) and some features of the Island, he thought Fraser Island was joined to the mainland. Dutch and Portuguese explorers are thought to have visited the Island decades before Captain Cook did.

However, the earliest inhabitants of Fraser Island were the Aboriginals. They did not write down their history, but anthropologists believe that they had lived on the east coast of Australia for 40,000 years before Europeans arrived.

Matthew Flinders, another well-known explorer, visited the Fraser Island region in 1802. Like Captain Cook, he failed to realise that it was an island. That realisation did not come until twenty years later when Captain William Lawrence Edwardson, looking for a new site for a penal colony, found the bed of water completely separating Fraser Island from the mainland.

Fraser?

Fraser Island was named after a Scottish couple, Captain James Fraser and his wife Eliza.

In 1836, Captain Fraser left Sydney, in charge of a brigantine¹, the Stirling Castle, headed for Singapore. Only a few days after they had left, their ship was wrecked in a reef along the coast of Queensland. Most people managed to escape the wreck in lifeboats, although after a few days of sailing the crew was mutinous and ready to give up.

They landed on Fraser Island shortly afterwards, where they met up with an Aboriginal tribe. Captain Fraser was killed, but Eliza and the first mate survived. When Eliza arrived back in Britain, she began telling her story, and a book and film, Eliza Fraser² were forthcoming in the '70s.

Shipwrecks

Many shipwrecks have occurred on Fraser Island and the surrounding waters. The lighthouse at Cape Sandy was established (in 1870) due to all the shipwrecks, but wrecks continued to happen, including celebrated Maheno, now a tourist attraction on the island.

Logging

Andrew Petrie visited Fraser Island searching for the grave of Captain Fraser. Although he did not find it, he did find many kauri pine trees on the Island. Twenty years later logging of these pines began on Fraser Island, with American John Piggott in charge. The pine was transported to a mill in Maryborough. A mill was established on the Island in 1919, by the company H. McKenzie Ltd. Six years later people began to notice the quality of other sorts of trees on Fraser Island. The logging intensified, with Fraser Island's felled trees being shipped and used all around the world. Logging in Fraser Island did not stop until 1991, the year before it achieved World Heritage Listing. Although much was lost in the logging, Fraser Island still has a wealth of large, beautiful trees.

World War Two

A commando training station was created on Fraser Island during World War Two. The commandoes were called the 'Z-Force' and later attacked Japan in a raid codenamed Operation Jaywick.